Protecting Children in Car Accidents is No Accident

Ashland, MACar accidents injure all kinds of different people—adults and children alike. And one would assume that when there are injuries affecting both adults and children in car crashes, that there is some kind of parental, or familial relationship amongst those in the car, affected by the automobile crash.

However, not always.

A single-car accident in Ashland, Massachusetts on Thursday injured the teen driver and three young children who were riding with her. According to reports the car crashed into a utility pole after the driver potentially became distracted.

All occupants were injured and transported to hospital for treatment. The 19-year-old driver, a girl from Framingham, was taken by land ambulance to MetroWest Medical center in Framingham, whereas the children—aged 5, 3 and 18 months, were either evacuated by medical helicopter to Umass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, or driven by land ambulance to MetroWest along with the teen.

There are a couple of issues with this story. One, is that according to police reports it is unlikely that the teen driver is the mother of the children, but rather in all likelihood a babysitter in the process of either transporting the children somewhere in her own car, or taking the kids with her while she ran an errand.

Thus, parents of children who are left in the care of a caregiver during the workday, for example, have to know that if the caregiver needs to transport the children anywhere, that the proper car seats are available to both protect the children in the event of a crash, and ensure the vehicle is up to legal code as it pertains to laws that require children of a certain age be restrained in the proper seats.

As passersby attended to the children after the Mazda Protégé hit the pole, they and attending police found that there was only one booster seat, and one child car seat in the vehicle. According to the law, all 3 children should have been in a proper child car seat.

It has been reported that car accidents are the leading cause of death amongst children. However, it also holds true that children can suffer life-long injuries that can affect their lives, and livelihood in adulthood if they are not properly restrained in a car.

In the State of Mississippi, for example, law enforcement officers claim they see a misuse rate of child car restraints of as much as 90 percent.

"The fatalities really represent the tip of the iceberg when it comes to car accidents," says Michael Hughes, the executive director of an organization dubbed Safe Kids Mississippi.

It should be noted that most cars are designed around the safety of the average-sized adult. Seat belts and air bags, and other protection manufacturers build into their cars typically serve the adult. That is why, for example, that new cars equipped with modern airbag systems—even the decelerated airbags—have a feature which disengages the airbag release mechanism if the system detects that the seat is either un-occupied, or occupied by someone of smaller size, and weight. A seat belt is designed to fit, and to snugly restrain an adult, but would not be guaranteed to restrain a child.

Thus, the need for approved childcare restraints, properly installed, in an effort to best protect a child from the forces of a car crash. As a parent, you could be held liable for an injury to a child, regardless of the actual cause of the crash, if you failed to provide the appropriate child restraints in the vehicle.

However, the same holds true for a caregiver who decides to transport children in her, or his charge. If your child is injured as the result of the negligence of a caregiver, that caregiver and her insurance company could be ripe for litigation.

You may well need the proceeds from a legal settlement to undertake the care of a child severely injured.

Injuries that could last a lifetime.